The U.S. Chamber of Commerce would prefer that you not know that the U.S. corporate tax code leaks revenue like a sieve. Chamber spokesman Martin Regalia complains about the media's and Sens. Carl Levin's (D-MI) and Byron Dorgan's (D-ND) treatment of a recent GAO report on corporate tax avoidance.

If it weren't for its direct impact on national security, we could all enjoy a hardy guffaw at the $500 million mess that is supposed to tie the nation's intelligence data together. The anti-terror intelligence database, known as Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), is the subject of recent House Science and Technology Committee's Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee report. The report found that "Railhead," the $500 million project that was supposed to tie together the intelligence data of the nation's 16 separate intelligence agencies. Instead:

Brad DeLong has a great post on the tradeoffs we face in bringing the long-term budget into balance.

Today has been a slow day in an already slow month in fiscal policy in Washington, DC, but the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) issued a very helpful report leading up to the release of poverty, income, and health insurance data from the U.S. Census Bureau next Tuesday. The report is a guide to what to look for in the Census release and how to assess whether economic growth is reaching low- and middle-income families. CBPP thinks these data could show some pretty unprecedented trends: